4394. CONCERNING THE COMING OF THE LORD. I spoke with the angels concerning the passion of the Lord, and concerning the opinion of the world at the present day, that he took away our sins; but it was replied to me that the life and crucifixion of the Lord took place that the scriptures might be fulfilled, as he himself said, to wit; (1) - because the representatives of the Jewish and of the ancient church figured Him as destined to fulfil all things, inasmuch as they had reference to Him, and because no representative church could have existed unless it should have represented Him, His life and other things relating to Him as born a man; (2) - because representatives had respect to the union of His human nature with His divine, and the temptations [He underwent] before they were united; (3) - because representatives were of such a nature [as to indicate] that heavenly truth should suffer, because it had perished, nay, had been crucified by the Jews, [and] He was the exemplar of heavenly goodness and heavenly truth, and because that suffered He suffered also. (4) - Besides which the human race could never have been saved unless He had come into the world, and had united the human to the divine essence, because there was no longer any good and truth, thus a disjunction of the human race and heaven [was imminent]. (5) - That He took away sins is not to be understood according to the common view of it, namely, that men should be altogether free from sins - for they remain in all their particulars - but that the human race should not perish in eternal death. (6) - When the human essence is united to the divine, the divine efficacy extends to the lower things which are of spirits, which, without the human essence, could not have been the case; wherefore also the Lord as to the human essence is a sun, and illumines [angels and men]. By the Divine [Essence] the angels were illuminated [prior to the Lord's advent], thus also the celestials, through whom it passed to inferior things; but when there was no longer a celestial, and the hells continued to be multiplied, then this medium was insufficient; thus [unless the Lord had come] they would have perished to whom the divine efficacy had formerly been able, through the celestials, to penetrate. See also above, n. 2259.